


Missio (Acquiesce in the Colosseum)

by apeirophobia



Series: Tacit Catastrophe [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Coercion, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:16:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apeirophobia/pseuds/apeirophobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Admiral Marcus abandons any pretense of ethics in lieu of personal gain, while Khan learns to walk the fine line between survival and surrender.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I am the motif,

**Author's Note:**

> strek-id-kink prompt: [Marcus/Khan, hostage, non-con] I am in need of some background stories for Khan while he was held hostage to Admiral Marcus. As much as he loathes Markus and his manipulation over him, he doesn't have much choice. After all, he is willing to do anything to save his crews -- developing weaponry, building military vessels and sometimes...sexually submitting to him.

Marcus asks him to build the missiles and Khan says _no_. (and Khan says _no_ when the Admiral leers and puts his hand meaningfully on his thigh) Admiral Marcus slaps Khan, _hard_ , across the face when he glares defiantly in response, and his cheek stings where bruises don’t form.

 

Starfleet is reaching for greatness, and achieving pettiness, but there’s still everything in between. Khan could give Marcus everything he asked for ( _has_ given him everything, ever since he woke up), and the Admiral would still demand more. His desk is a mess of blue-prints and modified equations, as Khan looks over, and goes about improving, the confidential trans-warp beaming device. It’s easy enough work. It’s just numbers; math, science, and physics. The technology far surpasses the time he comes from, but Khan was made to exceed expectations. He runs his finger down lines of code and thinks, _75 cryo-tubes of significant size and advanced industry, if I was a human of inferior imagination and intellect, where would I hide them?_

 

It’s a balancing act, playing the part of loyal agent, who’s working tirelessly to help militarize the Federation, while simultaneously formulating possible escape plans and ever strategizing about how to find and free his family. His work, and his facade, is made more difficult to maintain by the fact that he’s allowed little sleep, and even less privacy. Admiral Marcus keeps a close eye on him at work, often stopping by the lab just to ‘check on his progress’, and many of his after-work hours are spent in the older man’s presence as well. Khan stays in a townhouse owned by Marcus, and there are no locks on the bedroom doors. He knows what it means; no sense of protection, no personal space, no control. The Admiral is using old-school wear-down tactics, and just because Khan can easily identify them doesn’t mean they don’t get under his skin. Sitting in his lab in a rare moment of peace, he sips his double-shot coffee and tries, _tries_ not to feel so much. The heavy dose of caffeine doesn’t really have the desired affect on his augmented system, and he puts his face in his hands, and thinks, _I fought a war, I can handle this_. He was made, all those years ago, to be a superior human. In that, he knows, lies his inherent limitations. No matter how improved his chromosomes may be, there are still 46 of them. And he knows that all humans, even _perfect_ ones, when denied the opportunity to flee or fight, will eventually break, given the time and circumstance. Khan can not afford to break. His crew, his _family_ , are depending on him, and a life without them isn’t worth considering. _I will be_ ** _better_** , Khan thinks, _I will withstand_. He will become a machine if that’s what it takes.

 

There is no tactical advantage to _rape_ , Khan thinks. It’s a low, dishonorable act that speaks only to the depravity of the perpetrator. That being said, Alexander Marcus is a weak, _base_ human. Not the smartest of his kind (hence, why he needed to scour deep space to find someone who could build weapons for him), and sadly, fairly predictable in his perversions. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he would indulge in the power he has over his prisoner. That he would twist his fingers in Khan’s hair and shove him to his knees. It does though. Somehow it still surprises Khan, the first time Marcus trails his hand down his side, and slips it under his regulation uniform. He stills himself, reigning in the instinctual urge to flinch away, and takes a deep breath. Seventy-four lives hang in the balance, and everything that Khan holds dear is utterly at the Admiral’s mercy.

 

If he were fighting for himself, he’d be allowed to protest. If he were fighting for himself, he would have broken Admiral Marcus’ hand ten seconds ago, and already be out the door. If he were fighting only for himself, he wouldn’t be taking off his shirt and allowing himself to be pushed up against the Admiral’s desk. When wandering hands find their way to the waistband of his black pants, they’re tugged down roughly. Khan bites his lip, lest traitorous noises of fear or pain escape him. He knows he can’t turn Marcus down, but his body doesn’t seem to. He shudders when sharp teeth break the skin at the junction of his collar bone and his neck, but the puncture wounds are completely healed before blood has a chance to broach the surface. Marcus seems to find this a good enough reason to repeat the action, over and over, until he draws satisfying blood. Khan turns his head away and breathes shallowly, his usually torpid heart beating a frenzied pace, trying to ignore the bloody smirk on his captor’s face, and trying to catch his suddenly absent breath. He’s not very successful on either count.

 

“Look at me,” Marcus demands, his voice laced with authority and lust, as he parts Khan’s thighs with his knee. But before Khan has a chance to properly comply, Marcus shoves into him, and the next few moments are a hazy mess, even for Khan’s usually infallible memory. It _hurts_ , and Khan cries out, pressing his face closer to the surface of the desk, as if he could burrow beneath it, and escape his current situation. His outburst is not befitting of a leader (or a king, or a _captain_ ), but for once he’s not thinking of his sleeping crew, or of his needed complacency. In that instance, he thinks, _I wish I was not myself, so that someone would intervene_ , and it is a cowardly, traitorous thought, but Khan can not find it in himself to care. Khan might be having a _moment_ of weakness, but men like Marcus will always be weak, and beneath beings like Khan, in all the ways that truly matter. Khan closes his eyes as the Admiral pants and groans above him, and thinks, _filthy, disgusting, libelous_ , and ignores the corner of his mind that whispers, _What does that make you?_

Admiral Marcus, like most men, is easily sated. When cruel hands loosen their grip, Khan takes in a shock of breath, his thoughts spinning wildly. He thinks, _torture for torture’s sake has no higher purpose,_ and, _if it has no purpose, it can have no true affect_ , like a mantra, like an appeal to resolve. He tells himself, _this is nothing_ , as he mentally lists names and numbers of everyone in his family, reminding himself of what’s at sake, to help regain his composure, _as long as my family is safe, nothing can hurt me_. He can tell himself anything he wants, but any remnants of injuries fade long before his tear-tracks dry.


	2. and you are the monster,

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> strek-id-kink prompt: [Marcus/Khan, hostage, non-con] I am in need of some background stories for Khan while he was held hostage to Admiral Marcus. As much as he loathes Markus and his manipulation over him, he doesn't have much choice. After all, he is willing to do anything to save his crews -- developing weaponry, building military vessels and sometimes...sexually submitting to him.

Don’t talk unnecessarily with other members of Starfleet. Don’t make friends. And never, ever, let on that you are more than a particularly bright graduate. Those are the rules that Alexander Marcus lays out for his ‘protege’ on Khan’s first day at section 31. And Khan truly had no untoward desires to break them. But best intentions aside, Khan conquered the world (to an extent) by his teens and was part of a hunted race by twenty-five. Following rules to a T is possibly not his strongest suit (that would be oral debate and hand-eye coordination, if anybody’s keeping score). Augments, for all their charisma, ambition, and symmetrical bone structure, were not engineered to be unfriendly. Khan breaks two out of three rules by noon, and only avoids a full set on a technicality (as it turns out, Marcus doesn’t appreciate technicalities very much). 

 

A firm grip on the back of his neck, and that grave voice in his ear, saying, “You can easily find yourself on the other side of the microscope, again, if you choose to misbehave.”

 

The Admiral’s hands feel frigid, especially in such contrast to Khan’s heated skin. His augmented body is ever at war, producing white blood cells at an accelerated rate, and breaking down and consuming its own proteins, a machine making constant improvements. An elevated body temperature is one of the few outward tells of Khan’s separation from ‘natural’ humans. Not the most visible of markers, but one that’s perceptible, if someone were to pass too close. Marcus has commented on it before, as if _Khan_ was the one whose system was flawed, while tracing perpetually unmarred flesh with a touch that’s colder in temperament than temperature. Khan cringes under the uninvited touch, and thinks, **_I’m_** _the one who’s misbehaving?_

 

The smart-ass retort dies on his tongue, as he turns to face the Admiral, out of self-preservation more than self-control. He remembers how things were, the first few weeks he was awake: strapped to a gurney, needles piercing every part of exposed skin, the passage of time only measurable in the change of shifts of scientists and their assistants. They all looked at him like he was a creature from a foreign world, or a particularly interesting puzzle. He will not go back to that. He will not go back to days without eye contact, to florescent lights so bright, the hum of their burning filaments nearly drove him mad. Without stimulating interaction, or intellectual engagement, Augments start to _fray_ , like killer whales trapped in captivity. And what’s worst, every time Khan asked about his family, every time he spoke at all, he was ignored completely. He didn’t get any answers until Admiral Marcus came to see him, nearly four weeks after he’d been jarred out of cryo-sleep. And then, well, hell of a different sort began. Khan believes the phrase is, “the lesser of two evils”. At least, on his own feet, Khan can work and _think_ and plan. With even a semblance of freedom, he stands a chance of recovering his crew, and one day being reunited with his family. A _chance_ , in one’s own favor, is worth a thousand certainties against.

“So, which would you prefer, _Commander_?” 

 

Khan narrows his eyes at the Admiral’s tone. He hates questions that are not really questions (like, “Would you like to assist us on project _Vengeance_ , or would you like to never see your friends again, son?”) Questions that are not questions can have no correct answer.

 

“I would like to stay on this side of the microscope, _Sir_.” Khan answers, holding Marcus’ gaze, but an involuntary twist to his lips belies his neutral expression.

The Admiral leans against the lab counter and sighs, as if Khan’s slip of attitude is really putting him out, and says, “You know, Harrison, that mouth of yours is really gonna get you in trouble, one of these days.”

Admiral Marcus has this way of saying things, all false concern, that makes him sound like a perpetually disappointed father. Considering the _things_ he says to Khan, it’s more than a little disconcerting. Commands and threats are one matter, but the deplorably inappropriate comments turn the stomach when given in a mockingly paternal lilt. Khan never had a father, but as an applied concept, he finds himself offended on principle.

 

“ _That is not my name_ ,” comes Khan’s, low, almost unbidden response. The Admiral’s eyes snap up to meet Khan’s, a look of danger on his face. Khan puts the spectrometer he had been working with previously, down on the bench next to him, lest it get broken in any ensuing rebuttal. He is not defeated, he is simply realistic. If bad dreams and torn clothes are an inevitability, well, he’d rather not add ruined instruments to the list of casualties.

Moving faster than Khan had anticipated, Marcus wraps an aged hand around Khan’s biceps and drags him out of his seat, and onto the lab floor. (And, _oh_ , someone’s been doping on Augmented blood again.) This isn’t about Khan’s “rebellious” behavior in Section 31’s R&D department anymore, this is about power. Khan can admit, in the confines of his own mind, that he doesn’t have a _complete_ handle on human nature, especially in this late century. But if this was just about power, than the fact that the Admiral is visibly hard would be rather inapropos. So, then, power _and_ sex. It’s clearly an intoxicating combination for a man in Marcus’ position. To have someone of Khan’s aptitude and capabilities under his control. Or even simply, and sadly, someone of Khan’s age. Though he was born nearly two hundred and eighty years ago, in kinetic years Khan is far younger than the Admiral, and he knows how men can be.

Marcus digs his fingers into Khan’s jaw, and says, slowly, “I want my missiles,” as if talking to a distracted child.

 

“No,” Khan says, returning the Admiral’s patient tone, “You want _war_.”

“A war in which your own people will be the first lost, if you continue to be obstinate.” Marcus threatens, but there’s a dark promise in his voice, as he traces cold fingers over bowed lips, pressing them inside in a lewd manner. 

At a twist of the fingers, Khan chokes, his lips spread wide. He puts a hand up reflexively, to keep the Admiral’s lower body at a distance, and pushes against Marcus’ thigh, seeking air and an end to this violation. Marcus laughs when he gags, his throat convulsing around the Admiral’s fingers when they are pushed too deep.

“However many are still safely in stasis by the time I am satisfied makes no difference to me,” Marcus says, and there’s a breathless quality to his voice, as he stands, adjusting himself and straightening his clothes. Khan notices, belatedly, that the older man _has_ been satisfied, and then looks away, nauseated, as he swallows painfully, and tries to catch his breath.

 

“Six dozen cadavers, Harrison, it’s your choice.” says the Admiral, now at the door, “Don’t disappoint me.” 

 

And then he’s gone, leaving a live weapon with a bruised psyche behind.


	3. I shall abide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> strek-id-kink prompt: [Marcus/Khan, hostage, non-con] I am in need of some background stories for Khan while he was held hostage to Admiral Marcus. As much as he loathes Markus and his manipulation over him, he doesn't have much choice. After all, he is willing to do anything to save his crews -- developing weaponry, building military vessels and sometimes...sexually submitting to him.

There’s a quiet to Section 31 that unhinges even the most focused of minds. Six floors underground and Khan imagines he can hear every hiss of the lift’s doors, every heartbeat, every rustle of cloth as ensigns turn corners too quick, ever in a hurry to fulfill their duties. He actually _can_ hear the tick of an antique clock in an office two labs over, and it shatters the eerie subterranean calm. In a labyrinth of long narrow corridors and no natural light, Khan’s hyper-sensitive senses are nearly torture. He’s not  _claustrophobic_ , per se. Space travel has never made him panic. He didn’t writhe in the confines of his hibernation birth aboard the Botany Bay. He even feels a certain safety in the office of his lab, tucked away behind his desk, with just his numbers and his instruments, telling him things he knows, things he can _control_. Small spaces are not the problem, but huge spaces, filled with shadows and secrets, are what unnerves him. Section 31 is aggressively empty, and the chill of isolation makes him feel as if he’s suffocating.

 

Six months. That is how long Khan has been awake in this forsaken century. It has been five months since he was remanded into Admiral Marcus’ custody, and four since the Admiral began abusing his position for carnal satisfaction. Khan is so much more than a mere human, and yet, sometimes all Marcus seems to see is a body. Not an Olympic-level athlete, not a genius, not an advantageous product of three generations of successful genetic manipulation and intentional breeding. Just something to be _used_. It shouldn’t be an odd feeling, being subjugated. Afterall, Augment were originally made to serve humanity, to serve the good of mankind. They are just highly intelligent, highly moral, and highly adaptable _weapons_ , really. Inferior beings creating superior beings for a higher purpose will always go awry. Weapons that can think for themselves are the most dangerous kind, and mankind, despite its best intentions (or possibly, because of them) is fundamentally flawed. _Humans_ , Khan thinks, _are so_ ** _inspiring_**. They never fail to surprise him with all the new and awful ways they manage to go wrong. 

 

Khan is a knife that can taste the blood on its teeth, a gun that feels every pull of the trigger. But he was made to end wars, not start them. Khan knows violence is not without its merits, and peace is never without bloodshed, but what the Admiral is trying to force him to do, with the missiles, with the Klingons, with the neutral zone, goes beyond what he was made to be capable of. It’s all in his head, he knows. The codes, the mechanics, the blueprints, the things Admiral Marcus craves so badly. Part of him _wants_ to give the Admiral what he’s asking for, but another part doesn’t know how. In the face of starting a war, it seems that his inherent programming runs deeper than he previously assumed. The well-being of his family means more to him than anything, far more than his own life, but assisting in initiating an intragalactic war goes against everything they were meant to be. Not for the first time Khan wishes to be someone different, someone weaker, someone less painfully aware. A less intelligent man could bend to the Admiral will and not feel the full weight of conscience. But he is not lesser, he is _greater_ , in every sense of the word, and he will own the gravity of his actions. Khan sketches rough drafts of torpedos, and thinks, _for every thousand, every million people that die, one of_ ** _my_** _people will live_. He measures and compares designs, discarding the more efficient and less detectable models, and thinks, _I can bend, but I can not break._ Compromise is the first step on the road to hell, but as long as Khan goes there alone, he’ll be happy to burn.

At night, in a rare moment of peace, Khan stands in front of the bathroom mirror and takes off his clothes. The bathroom is the only room in the house with an interior door that locks, and Khan deflates behind it. He leans in close to the glass, breathe fogging the surface, and runs his hands over taunt skin and firm muscle. He is clinical, taking inventory of his form, critically eyeing any flaws and evaluating himself. Even after months out of cyro there are still spots that buzz with numbness, nerves that haven’t come back online. Long-term cyro is not a science, it is an art, and one that hadn’t yet been perfected when Khan and his family were forced to go under. Some things, like Khan’s cognitive abilities, and his sense of proprioception, are still not up to his usual standard. Others, like cell regeneration and sensory input, have shown themselves to be unaffected. It seems that the longer Khan is conscious the more things come back to him, physically, and yet, the longer he is held prisoner by Starfleet the more he can feel his emotional centre being eroded. It frustrates him more than anything, this usurpation of self. That as Khan Noonien Singh is relentlessly castigated and broken apart, John Harrison watches from the shadows, waiting to take his place. Khan will do anything he possibly can to forestall succumbing to the Admiral’s mind-games.

Finished with his inspection, Khan lifts a laser welding torch he stole from Engineering a few weeks ago. Pressing it to the skin of his lower torso, he burns the names of those he loves into his skin. Vessa, Ande, Tetra, Cicero. His beloved crew, his people, his _family_. Some named themselves for icons of historic importance, such as Cicero and himself. Some named themselves for sentiment. And others still, blessed to be born after the Makers were overthrown, were named by their own parents. Parents who loved them, who kept them. Parents who came together with the idea of love, not the motivation of furthering science. Khan is a class C, or a stage 3 Augment, the last to be engineered in a lab. The five children sleeping amongst his crew have been affectionately dubbed Class T, for tyke. Khan recalls their sweet faces and thinks that he might like to have his own Class-T one day. The thought flashes through his mind unbidden, but no less true, as he finishes the “a” at the end of Vessa, the name belonging to the Botany Bay’s youngest passenger. Khan shakes his head in resignation and pushes the thought to the back of his mind, where it is safe to dwell on such things.

Khan thinks, _Hieronymus, Teiresias, Jarron, Ezra_. He thinks, _A-10, C-03, T-12, T-05_. He repeats, _vital signs normal, hibernation steady_ , to himself, like a lullaby. If he just holds the course, they will awaken again, and everything will be as it was. The torch gives a little whine as he presses it to the soft spanse above his hip, exhausting the last of its power to carve one last name. The bathroom smells of burning flesh when he finally releases the tool, letting it drop to the tiled floor, and watches the name of his navigator fade as it heals before his eyes. The mirror feels cool on his skin where his forehead rests against it, and Khan thinks, if he can just survive Marcus, survive _this_ , he will be with his family again, and everything will be all right.

The invisible names and freshly repaired rifts in his skin still ache, hours later, when Marcus forces his way into Khan’s bed. A gasp dies in Khan’s throat when a cold hand covers his mouth and another finds its way into his pajama bottoms, and his feet kick out defensively. In his half-asleep state he’s all instincts and indignation. It’s only when fingernails dig into his skin, when hot breath ghosts the back of his neck, that Khan stills and remembers himself. Somewhere between helplessness and control, he feels the ache of his earlier self-inflictions, the ache of his family, like they’re there with him, and thinks, _everything will be all right._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! And for all the lovely comments and kudos!


	4. I'm not fond of myself alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> strek-id-kink prompt: [Marcus/Khan, hostage, non-con] I am in need of some background stories for Khan while he was held hostage to Admiral Marcus. As much as he loathes Markus and his manipulation over him, he doesn't have much choice. After all, he is willing to do anything to save his crews -- developing weaponry, building military vessels and sometimes...sexually submitting to him.

London smells different than Khan remembers it. A shifting of currents, he supposes, a gradual change over three hundred years. Less cigarettes, more plastic, a population spike, and at least two transportation companies have switched from Diesel. He supposes a lot can change in three centuries, but knowing and understanding are two different animals, and it still puts him off balance. Earth is not in the state he left it. It is his and yet it is not his. Like a book one puts down half-read, only to pick it up later to realized the story’s changed. Khan might still be the author of his own story, but unexpected events have thrown the narrative off-course, and it is up to him to weave the plots together. Whether there will be a meaningful soliloquy, or a meaningful eulogy, in the epilogue remains to be seen.

Khan had always liked London, it used to remind him of a mausoleum, with its grand buildings and cobblestone streets. Now London is bustling, an epicenter of modernity between bookends of the past. Like restored road-signs and old-fashioned lampposts, he too has become an artifact. Khan pauses on the walkway of the Tower Bridge, one of the few landmarks to remain modestly unchanged, and takes in the unfamiliar view like a ghost in a time-elapsed photograph.

There is a world of discontent between the beautiful cell of a townhouse that Khan resides in on Cartwright Street and the sterile halls of Starfleet, and Khan knows that more than glass separates him from the rushing masses. They are civilians and he is a prisoner of a war. A war they are blissfully unaware is taking place in the depths of section 31, beneath the very streets they walk on. But it is more than knowledge and ignorance, more than tiered and free, that separates Khan from Londoners of the 23rd century. The skin of man sits a little too tight on him, his posture too rigid, his gait too sure. He sits on the Underground, one leg thrown over the other, hands resting on his left knee, and he can hear all twenty-seven heartbeats of the car’s inhabitants. They all pulse in a dull echo to his own, but it is a disingenuous imitation. They are polar and non-polar molecules. Even in close proximity they will never interact.

He misses Delhi, he misses peace-times, and (sometimes) he even misses the comforting predictability of the institutions of his youth. He misses a world that no longer exists, buried beneath a world he doesn’t entirely understand. The world grew old and he did not. London is no longer the London he knew, London is not Delhi, and Delhi is no longer home.

* * *

In his dreams Khan walks down identical hallways and can’t catch his breath. Sometimes there will be a break in the continuous wall, a window, but when Khan steps closer to look out, to try and see where he is, he’ll discover there’s no glass in the frame and he’s too far up. Sometimes he’ll step back, back into the maze of endless wallpaper and soft carpet that he knows goes nowhere. Other times he leans too far out the broken window, out of a mixture of curiosity and desperation, and tips precariously over the edge of jagged glass. Those times he wakes to sheets bunched around his feet and blood under his nails. He never dies in his dreams. Even when he _lets_ himself fall, he always wakes before his body can make impact with the ground. He falls back asleep with a feeling of vague dissatisfaction, and wakes again to bitten-through lips and sheets that smell of Marcus’ cologne.

Sometimes, Khan wonders if he is ever truly awake. He wonders if the hibernation process went wrong and he is actually dreaming, his days in Starfleet’s labs simply an extension of his nightly roaming of disconcerting labyrinths. Maybe he is safe inside his hibernation birth aboard the Botany Bay, his body sleeping peacefully while his brain runs amok in the confines of his skull, a coffin for his sanity, made of flesh and bone. Then he remembers: he is an Augment. If he were to create a hell of his own making it would surely house a better devil than Admiral Alexander Marcus.

In his dreams, Khan remembers things that never happened. He recalls nice things, pleasant memories that he _doesn’t_ _have_. Lying in bed with someone, lazy-Sunday-morning relaxed, showing an innate vulnerability that waking!Khan would never indulge in in his current situation. Hot lips, almost as hot as his own, marking trails along his bare shoulder. He wakes, breathless, and for once it’s not out of fear.

Sometimes he dreams of a child. A beautiful child with blue-grey eyes and dark curls, and when the little boy laughs his laughter reminds Khan of the way Phae used to giggle, his face scrunched up like he couldn’t contain his amusement (and he couldn’t, _ever_ , much to the dismay of their minders) whenever Khan would make a particularly witty remark. Phae, his beloved navigator, _his little brother_ , Khan thinks fondly, and in his musing, half-conscious state, he smiles. But the small child in his mind’s eye is darker than Phae, and has chubby cheeks and long eyelashes that bring certain words to the foreground of his thoughts. Words like _precious_ and _adorable_ and _mine_? And when Khan wakes to an empty bed, it’s to be greeted not only with the familiar ache for what he sorrily misses, it’s with an ache of longing for something he’s never had.

 

In his dreams, Admiral Marcus tells him to build the missiles and John Harrison says _yes_.

* * *

Monday morning is Khan facing Marcus across the sleek surface of the conference table, crossed arms resting on the table before him, face neutral.

 

The Admiral shuffles a pile of forms into an orderly fashion and then folds his hands. Paper and ink. Official business.

 

Khan, who’s five steps ahead of this charade, reads Marcus’ intentions and says, as calmly as he can manage and utterly serious, “If you take everything away from me, you are really going to regret it.”

Admiral Marcus observes the Augment’s posturing and, as per usual, decides to underestimate it entirely, before saying, with finality, “You’ll regret it more.”, and it’s the utter truth, and both Khan and Marcus know it.

 

(the fine print says, ‘may include premature specimens’ and ‘knowledge of non-human organisms in the developing stages may yield critical information’ and ‘further experiments of similar subjects to confirm initial subject’s responses to stimuli are an accurate representation of group’)

Khan doesn’t know how he does it. How he puts down the pen. How he leans back in his chair, like he’s thinking it over. How he doesn’t splinter the table, doesn’t break the legs off his chair and use them to widen the Admiral’s smirking mouth until it splits. Doesn’t mutilate Marcus’ body to the point of being unrecognizable, digging his fingers into the hollows of his eye-sockets until Khan can _feel_ whether there’s a soul in there or not.

“The experiments are indefinite,” says Marcus, shaking Khan from his reveries of bloodlust, and he means, we don’t know for _certain_ how many of your family we’ll kill, how many of your loved ones, your _siblings_ , their _children_ , we’ll thaw out and leave to rot on a slab.

“But of course, repeating our earlier findings will be instrumental to our progress, so _some_ experimentation will be critical.” Marcus continues, and there’s that damn _smirk_ again.

 

“And the children?” Khan asks, and he marvels at the way his voice doesn’t waver. His tone even lifts at the end, proper inflection to the finish of a question. He thinks, _what purpose do they serve_?

The Admiral gives him a look of tried patience, as if Khan is being deliberately slow about connecting the dots, despite Marcus _knowing_ that isn’t the case, and says, “Come now,” in a tone of mock pity. It is the academic equivalent of a “ _duh_ ,” response.

Khan thinks of his niece’s smile, her sense of humour, her love for logic puzzles and her habit of obsessively learning all the common names and geniuses of flowers that she could fit into her three-year-old mind. He thinks of his god-son’s first steps, how when the boy was born he’d never felt such joy at a child simply _existing_ before. How the child, Jarron, had turned out with central-heterochromatic eyes and his parents couldn’t have been happier. _A genetic anomaly_ , they’d said, _all on his very own_. They were so proud.

 

Seventy-five cryo-tubes makes seventy-four inhabitants, not counting himself.

 

Khan wonders, _am I dreaming_?

 

He turns the pen over in his hands, and doesn’t feel anything at all.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update took so long!
> 
> Also, I know I said there would be comforts in this chapter, and there really isn't, so I'm quite sorry about that. There will be comfort coming, things just took a slightly different path in getting there. :]


	5. An apotheosis of potential.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> strek-id-kink prompt: [Marcus/Khan, hostage, non-con] I am in need of some background stories for Khan while he was held hostage to Admiral Marcus. As much as he loathes Marcus and his manipulation over him, he doesn't have much choice. After all, he is willing to do anything to save his crew: developing weaponry, building military vessels and sometimes...sexually submitting to him.

 

Lucille Harewood, a little girl smelling of topside London and death, wanders, literally and figuratively, into Khan's life (and lab) on a Wednesday afternoon. Her thinning black hair is twisted into two braids and she has the sleeves of her grey jumper pulled over her hands, as if in a chill. She is clearly Lt. Harewood's daughter, a feat made obvious by the tone of her skin and the shape of her eyes, even without her father's security badge in her hand.

 

Khan pauses, curious at the interruption, and says "Hello," the greeting equal parts statement and question. His voice sounds a bit hollow, unused, as it echoes in the nearly-deserted laboratory. Marcus sees to it that he mostly works alone, no opportunities for interaction aside from research reports and his private interrogations by the Admiral himself. Objectively speaking, Marcus needn't worry; Khan keeps to himself, keeps busy, and never initiates conversation. Subjectively speaking, no amount of worrying will do Marcus any good, in the end; history tells a very specific tale of what happens to those who seek to control what they don't understand.

 

Lucille giggles, as if she knows she's not supposed to be where she is, and Khan is surprised at her liveliness. The little girl doesn't look like she should be far from a hospital bed. "I'm lost," she says, in a way that it's clear to Khan that even she doesn't believe her own lie, and looks around the lab with avid curiosity.

 

"Is somebody missing you?" Khan asks, not unkindly, as he watches her explore her surroundings. The way she moves, her deliberate nature, reminds him of another little girl whom he loves very much. He can't believe it's been nearly a year, in waking time, since he's seen Vessa smile. He can hardly comprehend that it's been nearly three hundred years since the little girl has taken a breath. The thing about cryogenic-suspension is that it's like a dream: when you're under you feel every moment of weightless drifting, but as soon as you awaken the fog lifts, and it's like the elapsed time disappears. Ten months ago Khan could feel three centuries of unconsciousness in his bones, but today he could almost convince himself he never slept at all. He knows it is simply a psychological side effect of the reanimation process, but it still scares him, forgetting.

 

Lucille shakes her head with a smile, "Not for another ten minutes," she says conspiratorially, and then adds, "My name is Lucy,"

 

Khan takes her hand, feeling the heat radiating off it, the fluttery chaos of her pulse. "I'm John," he says, and wants to kick himself for how much it doesn't feel like a lie.

 

 "John," Lucy repeats, her accent (a mix of Southern London and Western Asia, perhaps?) making it come across as "Jean", and points to the equipment on the counter behind Khan, asking, “Are you old enough to play with the best toys?”

 

 _Play..._ Khan hears in Marcus' voice and a tremor he can't quite control shivers under his skin. Khan looks at all his instruments and gadgets strewn about the laboratory and imagines they would look enticing if he were here under anything resembling voluntary terms. Still, he decides to abridge the truth since revealing himself to be an out-of-time science experiment gone-horribly-right will probably not pass without comment, even to a child of primary school age.

 

“I’m nearly four times your age,” Khan says, opting for a technically biologically correct, but less chronically accurate, answer. 

 

And Khan can see her pause, counting in her head (not on her fingers,  _smart child_ , Khan thinks), before exclaiming, “Two from thirty? That’s my aunt's age!”

 

“But she doesn't do sciences,” Lucy continues, enthusiastically, waving her hands as she talks, “she works with computers, on the bridge of her star-ship.”

 

“Oh,” Khan says, smiling in response, and it’s an involuntary quirk of the lips, his interest peaked more by her presence, her eagerness  _to be_ , than it is by the answers she gives,  “Is that what you’re going to do, when you grow up?”

 

“I’m not going to grow up,” Lucy replies, off-handedly, and on any other child it would be an exclamation of youthful defiance, but Khan can smell the necrosis build-up in her cells, systems already beginning to fail, as her body patterns itself after a disease. Genetic derailment is an anomaly of nature; a mutation that brings early death instead of an evolutionary advantage. It is a tragedy, a tragedy that happens to be one of the few terrible things he knows he will never have to experience first-hand. 

 

This morning Khan was knee-deep in hibernation births, the steady thrum of his family’s vital signs the most beautiful sound his ears have ever heard in their three decades of consciousness. He can still see his loved ones’ faces, in his mind’s eye, sleeping peacefully beneath the glass. His niece, his nephew, his little  _brother_. Simply knowing that they are here and they are real, it fills Khan with a sense of balance that he’s been missing of late. He knows what it is to be beloved. He remembers what it is to love. And he knows that Lucille Harewood is all that is precious in the world to someone else. It would take so little effort on his part to save her, it seems almost a crime not to.

 

Thoughts trip over one another in Khan's mind, pesky ethics and petty wants and probabilities weaving around each other as he calculates how much of his genetic material would be needed to rewrite the flawed segments of her DNA. What really is the death of one less little girl?  _It is nothing_ , thinks Khan,  _and everything_. 

  

Eighty-eight months meets 274 years and Khan smiles, purpose and intent coloring his face with a light that’s been absent for the past nine months, as he says, "Who would you like to be, if you could?" 

 

She twists her hands, a gesture of nervous contemplation, tilts her head, and says, "That's silly," like he's asking her what the weather's like on some planet no one has ever been to. She shakes her head and asks, "What would you like to be?"

 

" _Happy_ ," Khan replies, feeling empathetically truthful, since he asked Lucy to conjure something equally unthinkable. 

 

A soft buzzing at the door interrupts them and Khan startles in a manner ill-befitting of a former-dignitary. His jumpiness goes unnoticed as Thomas Harewood steps in, looking frantically for his daughter.

 

"Lucy," Lt. Harewood says, an attempt at a scolding that doesn't hold up in daughter's presence, "Your doctors appointment is in ten minutes, we need to be getting upstairs,"

 

"Coming Papa," Lucy says, beaming at her father, and then she turns and surprises her father and Khan both by throwing her thin arms around his frame and murmuring, "It was lovely to meet you, John," into his shoulder. Khan can still feel the warmth of her when she lets go, like an imprint of kindness. Later it will occur to him that she's the first human who's ever touched him without an ulterior motive, or bringing him pain. It will also occur to him later how warm she was, almost as warm as he is, and what an ominous implication that is in consideration of her health.

 

Lucy stops on her way out the door. "If I could," she says, and the words _grow up_ are not uttered, to not hurt her father, no doubt. "If I could," Lucille says again, as if she's imagining a fantasy, "I would like to make people better," and her face is a picture of righteousness and determination, a desperation that only the dying know.

 

 _Make people better_ , is like a mantra (like a kick to the stomach) for any Augment who's ever questioned ' _Why do I exist?_ ' and found the answer wanting. If there's anything Khan has taken to heart in his entire life, it's an empty truth that seeking perfection rarely turns out to be to the seeker's benefit and yet...mythology is a warning, the same story told with many names, written and ignored by man. Words of haunting and promise. It's not philanthropy, it is indulgence, and it's as familiar to Khan as the hiss of liquid nitrogen and the burn of the welding torch is to John Harrison.

 

"Like a doctor?" Khan asks, with cautious apprehension, and he tells himself he doesn't know what he wants the answer to be.

 

"Like a scientist," she says, and if her answer sounds innocent, it's only because it's coming from adorable seven-year-old girl.

 

"Thank you for looking after her, Harrison," Harewood says with a nod as he leads Lucille through the door. One more smile, and a little wave, and she's gone.

 

Khan wants to leave his mark on this world, this time, this _people_ , and Lucille Harewood might just be the answer to questions he didn't dare to ask. Children are beautiful things full of potential and ambition, beauty in it's infinite depths, whatever moral shade those dreams may take: potential for greatness, and ambition for things they don't know they shouldn't want. Khan was a child once. He was created for greatness. He was created by foolish, ambitious scientists who grew to call his greatness terrible.

 

He is a child no longer, but that does not mean he is without dreams.

 

 _Lucille Harewood_ , Khan thinks,  _I will make you better._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to everyone who's reading and to everyone who's left me kind messages in the past, they are much appreciated. :D I apologize tremendously for the hiatus, and hope you enjoy! <3


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